precisely to it. And instead of trying to manipulate a video camera hanging at the end of a 45meter (150-foot) pendulum of cable, expeditions can employ "remote operated vehicles" that can be controlled from the relative comfort of Artist Netia Piercy will record the design on the Mycenaean a ship 's cabin with drinking cup, or kylix, she exmaines with Robin Piercy, George a simple joystick, Bass and Claude Duthuit. and can carry a without a metal-detector survey of this colortelevision camera anywhere within deep site, the question of whether other the range of the connecting cable. statues lie buried in the mound will But, still, the most attractive areas for remain unanswered . searchers come from the sponge divers ' Earlier, in 1971, with a grant from the reports-wrecks that we could not loUS National Science Foundation, Bass cate because they were somewhere out had been able to buy a Klein sidescan in the sand, far from the rock-sand intersonar. At that time I was teaching phys- face, with no trail to lead us back to ics at Robert College in Istanbul, and them . We have heard reports of six huge was excited by his offer to head a "high- jars standing proudly on the bottom, and tech" search for new wreck sites. But of yet another mountain of amphorasafter a month at sea, staring at sonar "enough to fill two trucks." In the Izmir printouts, I was discouraged at how dif- Museum, there is a wonderful statue of ficult it was to separate shipwreck an athlete that sponge draggers raised anomalies from other background sig- from just 150 feet of water. Is there an nals-to tell wrecks from rocks. Some- entire cargo of bronze statues out there? times a dark spot on the paper promised We won't know until we look. .:t a target that we could never relocate, while other times we spent a whole Donald A. Frey, vice president of INA , morning homing in on what proved to be works to adapt technology to the needs a rock. In the meantime, from sponge- of the Institute' s archaeologists. He has diver leads, we located several good lived in Bodrumfor the last 17 years, wrecks with only a few dives. I was a with his Danish wife Suzanne and their high-tech man, but I surrendered to com- daughter Kristen . This article was first mon sense. We should gather as much printed in Aramco World last year. information as possible from the sponge divers, we decided, and inspect everything they could show us . Then , and only then, should we turn back to hightech remote sensing. Now we have come full circle: the sponge divers' leads are few, while hightech remote sensing has made impressive improvements. INA director Martin Wilcox , the inventor of the ultrasound medical scanner, recently completed the design of a new sonar which works with a PC computer, providing a multi-colored acoustic map of the seabed. Its higher acoustic frequency also means improved resolution, to the point of being able to distinguish the shapes of individual amphoras. Meanwhile, satellite navigational systems allow us to record the exact location of each anomaly to within a few meters·, and later return
22
INA in the Field . .. The Institute of Nautical Archaeology is currently involved with the following projects: Bahrain • underwater survey of the Bahrain island group Bulgaria • underwater survey of the Bulgarian Black Sea coastline Egypt • excavation of 12 Early Dynastic boats dating to circa 3000-2700 BC •underwater survey of the Red Sea coast at Wadi Hammamat Holland• excavation of a mid 16thcentury pram from the Zuiderzee Israel • excavation of a shipwreck in the southern bay at Dor • underwater survey of the Sea of Galilee Kenya • excavation of the late 17thcentury Portuguese frigate Santo Antonio de Tanna at Mombasa Turkey • excavation of an 11thcentury merchant ship at Serce Limani • excavation of a late 14th- or early 13th-century BC merchant ship at Ulu Burun •underwater survey of a 5thcentury ship at Yalikavak • annual underwater surveys of the Turkish coast Jamaica • excavation of the 17thcentury submerged town of Port Royal USA • excavation of a mid 1 Bthcentury coastal sloop in Georgia • underwater survey of the 19th-century sidewheel ship Champlain in Vermont • excavation of an early 19thcentury horse ferry in Vermont •underwater survey of Mount Independence , a Revolutionary War Period earthwork in Vermont • underwater survey of the 19th-century schooner Water Witch in Vermont Individual memberships to INA , which include a quarterly newsletter, are available by sending a $25 check to INA , PO Drawer HG , College Station TX 77841-5137.
A Turkish sponge diving boat underway. SEA HISTORY 68, WINTER 1993-1994